My Mother's Vintage Jewelry

Two years ago I started going through my mother's vast collection of vintage costume jewelry. These beautiful treasures were passed on to me after her passing in 2013. I wrote about some of these pieces in a blog post two years ago - you can click here to read that post.

Well I put the jewelry aside for a while and am now revisiting the adventure of going through all these marvelous pieces. My attention was redirected to the jewelry after my brother and sister-in-law found even more of my Mom's jewelry while helping my Dad sort through some things at his home.

This spectacular necklace is a triple strand of dark cream faux pearls and aurora borealis crystals. It is a choker style measuring 15 inches plus a three inch extender chain. I love this piece for its bold deco styling!

This next piece I'm pretty sure was one of my Mom's favorites because it is in her favorite color which was pink!  It is another triple stranded faux pearl necklace in several rich vibrant hues of pink.  There is hot pink, light pink and some hints of purple and lavender in some of the beads. The eclectic mixture of pearls, glass beads and fire-polished crystals is just my Mom's style! It is a choker style measuring 15 inches plus a two inch beaded extender.

Now I need to decide on whether to keep these pieces "as is" or to disassemble and repurpose them into something different. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

And if you want to see more pieces from my Mom's collection, you can visit my Pinterest board dedicated to her collection.

Pink Fire Opal Heart Jewelry - Downton Abbey Inspired

I ordered and received several new pieces for making jewelry last week and have been busy designing some new pretties.  Here's a pic of some of the pretty pieces - I absolutely love the pink glass fire opal hearts.

I have used glass fire opals in the past for quite a few designs, but these are the first hearts I have been able to find.   Glass opals are absolutely gorgeous!  Also known as Harlequin Glass, they have amazing fiery flashes of color.  These are pink, but they can also be found in red and other colors as well.  Since I loved the hearts so much, I started with them first.  I used the large pink glass heart for a necklace and the smaller ones for a pair of earrings.  Both designs have a Downton Abbey sort of look.

The hearts and other components here came from jansjewels.com - which has some awesome vintage style jewelry components. I also used some components I already had in stock - like the beautiful antique brass stamping on the necklace which came from another awesome site vintagejewelrysuppies.com.

Here are some pictures of the finished fire opal designs:

That's all for now, but more designs to follow.  Before then, be sure to check out all my Fire Opal Collection in my Etsy shop!

My Mother's Jewelry Treasure Chest

One of my last posts was about my mother's recent passing away.  One of the inevitable tasks after such an event is going through the loved one's possessions.  Initially I dreaded doing this, but once started I found it therapeutic and helpful in dealing with her death.

My Dad asked me to come and help go through her clothing and personal belongings.  She had a lot of clothing, some not even worn - still with tags.  She was a bit of a shopaholic - like me.  We donated most of the clothing to a local charity where it will be put to good use.  But as I dug through her closets and dressers I found some real treasures to keep for myself.

One of the treasures was an entire chest of drawers filled with her costume jewelry from over the years.  In her younger days, my Mom loved to deck herself out with costume jewelry, although in recent years I only remember her wearing her wedding ring and her topaz birthstone ring.   Finding these beautiful baubles brought back many memories - I remember her sometimes letting me play "dress up" with some of her jewelry.  Mom loved jewelry and passed this love on to me, and over the years I developed a love for making my own jewelry.

Even more amazing than the amount of jewelry I found was the incredible way she had organized it.  Everything was stored in an orderly color coded fashion inside egg crates and candy boxes.  There were boxes with black jewelry, white jewelry, rose colored jewelry, blue jewelry and so on and so on.  For this post I thought I would share her collection of black jewelry.

My Mom's Collection of Black Jewelry

Black and Gold Deco Beaded Necklace

Black and Gold Deco Beaded Clip-on Earrings

Bold Black Glass and Silver Deco Necklace w/Matching Earrings

Bold Black Glass and Silver Earrings

Black Beaded Stretch Bracelet

Black and Rhinestone Bangle Bracelets

Floral and Black Clip-on Earrings

Black and Silver Clip-on Earrings

Black Rose Clip-on Earrings

Large Black and Gold Oval Clip-on Earrings

Black Glass Flower Earrings

Round Black Glass and Gold Earrings

Faceted Round Glass and Silver Earrings

Round Glass Screw-back Earrings

Textured Round Black Glass Earrings

What will I do with these vintage treasures?  Do what Mom would want me to do ... upcycle some of them to make more jewelry of course!  She loved the fact that I made jewelry and I even found some of the pieces I made for her in the past - I will not be parting with those treasures but will post some pictures of them in the future.  Will also post pictures as I design some new pieces from the vintage treasures above!